


Suspicions

by MeredithBrody



Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:51:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeredithBrody/pseuds/MeredithBrody
Summary: This is a post 2x17 fic and contains spoilers for that episode that, believe me, you don't want before you watch it so watch the episode then come back to this.





	Suspicions

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a tram. Straight up saying that, so there may be some odd words that I didn't catch on editing. Mostly this is just another excuse for 1200+ words of Kendra and Lyor cuddling.

Kendra kept having to remind herself that it wasn’t only the 6 people in that room that knew about the President’s therapy. They had pushed for it together, as a staff, but none of them had ever known what was going on in the sessions. None of them knew if it would hurt or help him. Emily might have, Aaron too. The rest of them were in the dark. Kendra was looking forward to helping whoever prosecuted the case, but first, she had to figure out which of her friends has done it. She trusted them, or she thought she had. Now she wasn’t sure and she couldn’t talk about it with anyone, because the only people she’d want to talk about it with were also people she was now suspicious of.

A knock on her door made her jump and she almost smacked herself in the face with the file. Oh, how glad she was that the doors were closed. “Come in,” she yelped as she tried to make herself look put together. Lyor slipped in the door and shut it quickly behind him, clearly feeling just as suspicious as she was. “You know they are going to suspect us first?”

“That was my worry too.” She admitted. They were the newcomers to the staff, and though it had been months, sometimes she still felt the distance between the staff who had been her straight after the Capitol bomb and herself and Lyor. Maybe it was why they had gravitated to each other so much over the others. She enjoyed spending time with Seth and the others, but when she looked for someone, she nearly always went to Lyor first.

“It’s not you, right?” He asked, his typical blunt fashion causing that part of her that often reacted first to rise in defence. She took a breath and thought it through, he had to ask, she had been thinking of asking him too. She would trust him if he told her plainly that it wasn’t him, would he trust her I’d she said it wasn’t her? She was going to have to take the chance.

“It’s not me, Lyor.” Secretly she already thought it wasn’t him. This wasn’t his style. He didn’t do sneaky like this. There were people this would suit more. She motioned to the sofa beside her, wanting to feel more like they were having a casual chat, not potentially defining the course of their relationship. God, it felt so much bigger when she thought about it like that. “It’s not you either, is it?” He sat down and just took hold of her hand.

“No, it’s not me Kendra.” He confirmed, squeezing her hand as they both sat back. How many nights had they spent like this? Cuddled up on a sofa somewhere talking through what had been going on in their lives and professions that day. Lyor was usually not a cuddly person, or at least that’s what he told people, yet more often than not he was the one who would instigate this. They both seemed to be taking each other at face value and Kendra couldn’t imagine now it being him.

Truthfully she didn’t want to imagine it being any of them. Kendra knew that it was going to be difficult to reconcile what was going on with the fact they would still all have to work together. She didn’t want to be suspicious of her colleagues. Kendra liked to know one way or the other, it was why criminal had never interested her the same way as other aspects of the law. You never knew if who you were representing was innocent. “I don’t want it to be anyone.”

“Me either.” He said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to him. Kendra let out the breath she’d been holding, these little gestures telling her that he really did believe her. For all that he spoke, Lyor was a very non-verbal person. He showed how he felt with his actions and that was how she knew here that he believed her. “Who do we know for a fact knows about the President’s therapy. Other than us.”

“Emily, Aaron, Seth, Chuck, Hannah, Mike… The kids, Trey, Dr Frost.” She was struggling after that, even most of the Secret Service didn’t know what was going on during his therapy sessions, and Kendra knew they were still bringing the therapist in under the guise that he was helping her. She’d been the only member of the White House staff to see the accident, and it had had some difficult side effects but almost four months on she was over it. That’s what she liked to think, anyway.

“You think she knows? Dr Frost?” A reasonable question, but Kendra had seen how friendly she was with the President, had heard the way they spoke to each other. Unlike some of the other’s on staff, she didn’t think there was anything romantic in it, but they were close friends and Kendra was certain that the President would have confided in her.

“Oh yeah, she knows.” Maybe it was intuition, she didn’t know. There weren’t any other people that she could think of that would have the information. Of course, there was always the chance that some junior staffers may have put two and two together, but it didn’t seem likely. Despite the list, Kendra still didn’t think anyone stood out. “But I think that’s it. Maybe the Vice President.”

“She doesn’t want to take over, though,” Lyor answered swiftly, and Kendra wondered both how he knew that and how he answered it so quickly. She didn’t think they’d ever worked together. Maybe that was his intuition. Politics suited him better than anyone else she’d ever known.

“Doesn’t she?” She asked, wondering what Lyor’s take on the Vice President was. Kendra knew that he wasn’t against her, but he’d had the most reservations. She wasn’t party to the political side of the discussions, she never had been, so she’d never known what Lyor’s exact issues were. Maybe this time, where they were private and quiet and didn’t need to prove anything to anyone was the time where he’d open up?

“Who knows?” Maybe not. Kendra liked Elinor Darby, enjoyed listening to the woman speak and had enjoyed speaking to her when they’d been stuck in the bunker together a few days earlier. But she didn’t actually know what was going on. At least Lyor seemed no more sure than she was. “Right now, the only person I trust is you, and I’m okay with that.”

“You’re okay with not trusting our colleagues and people you’ve known longer than you’ve known me?” Sometimes that was the thing about Lyor that Kendra just couldn’t understand. He put so much on her and while she loved that she also wondered how he’d come to trust her like this. When she’d joined the staff she’d only known Aaron, and that was only distantly.

“But you know me,” Lyor said simply, and that melted Kendra’s heart. “Right now that’s enough. Let’s just focus on what we have here.” He settled himself against her again and reached forward for the remote to put the TV on. These nights nearly always ended up with them falling asleep right there in her office, but if anyone asked her, Kendra would tell them that she was more than happy with that. Tomorrow they would face their latest crisis, but right now she was going to enjoy being here with him and knowing that whatever was coming they were in it together.


End file.
